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Toys "R" Us Memories

One last question, what kind of retail displays were you able to take home? Ive alway been curious about neon signs. Did your TRU have any and if so do the Nintendo reps take them with them when the store is done with em or were they open for grabs?

None when I worked there. Not like the ones you're talking about. I took home a lot of Atari Lynx and TurboGrafx-16 signage when I was about 11 or 12, but that was a few years before I ever worked at TRU. They had gotten to know me at my local TRU when I was young, always coming in looking for Lynx and TurboGrafx. When Lynx accessories finally went on clearance I went to the store manager and offered him a deal, I'd give him $30 for everything but he'd have to come down on the price and let me take the signage with me. He agreed. I was 11! There was one Lynx sign that I wasn't able to take, I remember it had a blue background with the Lynx logo over it. This was a piece of flexible plastic that fit into the top of the shelf above where you'd take the yellow tickets to buy a game. All game systems at the time were like this in TRU. Once you moved out of the Lynx section there was a TurboGrafx section with a similar sign. The TG one was black and grey with bonk on it. I think I have a video of that one on my bedroom wall. The rest of that aisle was Sega. The next aisle was entirely Nintendo. Again, this isn't from when I worked there, I'm just sharing memories from when I was a kid and already trying to collect Atari stuff as best I could.

Later on, when I worked at TRU the only kind of "displays" I was ever able to take home were cardboard standups and display boxes. For example, when Conker's Bad Fur Day came out we had an oversized Conker box that we put together and sat in the middle of the floor. Within a few weeks those things were usually pretty tattered. Same with posters and other signage. Believe me, I tried to save everything worth saving but by those days there wasn't a lot.

TRU today, sadly, is not what it use to be. It would be nice to see the older setup again and hear all of the video game sounds echoing through out the stores.

You are absolutely right. I watched this happen first hand. When they were done converting the store from the old concept to the new concept, the dust had settled and everything was cleaned up, it suddenly wasn't the Toys "R" Us that I had always known growing up. Shelf by shelf they reconfigured it into something different. It was never the same after that. They should've at least left the glass display cases with the video game systems and accessories on display. I told our regional manager that when he came to visit. I told him that without that case, it's one less thing to inspire awe in these kids that could last a lifetime and create new memories and brand loyalty to TRU. That was like 18 years ago.

One last question, what kind of retail displays were you able to take home? Ive alway been curious about neon signs. Did your TRU have any and if so do the Nintendo reps take them with them when the store is done with em or were they open for grabs?

Here are two images of the TurboGrafx-16 overhead display that mounted to the TRU shelf above where you'd pull the yellow tickets out to buy a video game. You can see the little plastic tabs along the edge that would have secured the sign to the shelf. Note that this is a newer sign because it has Air Zonk on the left side and Bonk on the right side, and Zonk came pretty late in the game for TG. Also the sign only says "TurboGrafx" rather than getting too specific with the TurboGrafx-16 logo or the TurboDuo logo. This is because they both shared one shelf area. If I remember correctly, there were two of these TurboGrafx signs because TurboGrafx took up two shelf widths on the aisle. By that time one shelf had a small, shelf-mounted TurboGrafx-16 system kiosk with tickets for standard TurboGrafx-16 HuCards, and the other shelf had a small TurboDuo kiosk with tickets only for TurboDuo Super CDs.

Also if you look closely you'll see a neon orange "strip" that has the TurboGrafx-16 logo stamped on it many times. This was a shelf strip that would mount into an actual shelf where price tags would normally be. They were just a decoration. All game systems had these, and I had one for Atari Lynx as well.

These pictures are actually screenshots from an upcoming video project that I can share more of with you when it's ready. It's been a pretty big undertaking. We'll save that one for another day. Enjoy!

I think these are called cornice signs, if I remember my KayBee terminology. Are these yours, or did you take these photos at the store? I went into a TrU when they were dismantling this section to make what I guess was the R Zone, and they let me take a few of them.

I think these are called cornice signs, if I remember my KayBee terminology. Are these yours, or did you take these photos at the store? I went into a TrU when they were dismantling this section to make what I guess was the R Zone, and they let me take a few of them.

Awesome thread!

Those pictures are screenshots from a video of my bedroom wall in 1994

I worked at my local TRU around the time the Lynx was out, I used to be cashier then went to maintenance and collect shopping carts carts. used buy star wars figures and some atari games at the store too. this was only for xmas season.
heres the funny part, this was basically the only christmas as far as I remember that my mom surprised me because was when I got my Lynx because she got the lynx at store I was working at

You can't really make it out unfortunately, but the smaller black sign to the right of my bedroom window is another TurboGrafx-16 display. This one was affixed to the top of the shelf-top TurboGrafx-16 kiosk. I tried to get the kiosk from TRU, but they said it had to go back to the rep or to corporate or something. I was able to take the sign off of it though

TRU really needs to go back and setup their stores to bring back that wow factor. Seeing all of those systems on display was always awe inspiring. Seeing systems in those display cases made you want to take them all home. Even after all the hype of new systems coming out and finally get released TRU was usually the first place to see the real thing...behind glass of course. Not some poster or cardboard cutout. Good times.

When I first started working at Toys "R" Us this website was in its infancy. Every day was spent at school, every afternoon and evening and weekend was spent working at Toys "R" Us, and every night was spent chatting away on Atari Age, learning HTML and stitching together what became Atari7800.com. Our web store was a big component of the original site. Some nights I would break down stacks of 2600s and 7800s until my fingers were sore, breaking down parts and screws, separating by condition and placing into parts cabinets. Every component was scrubbed cleaned, and reconditioned. Newly refurbished game systems would be put together "from scratch" using reconditioned parts from my parts bin, tested, and sold with a warranty. I remember Wednesdays and Thursdays would be my teardown days, the weekend would be assembly, Monday nights I would get all the orders together with their games boxed and ready to ship out, and would take everything to the Post Office or my Pak-N-Ship place on Tuesday after school and before work at Toys "R" Us.

Somewhere in the middle of all this nonsense I found time for the Blog. There were Atari sites on the web back then, mostly The Atari 2600 Nexus which became Atari Age around that time, Atari Museum, Atari vendors like Video 61, and lots of sites like this: http://www4.ncsu.edu/~awwatkin/ATARI/Atari.html There weren't a lot of sites delving into "Atari Lifestyle" and that's what I set out to create. It became our core mission and still is to this day.

Taking Atari Orders to the Post Office on Tuesdays

Loading up the car with Atari orders to take to the Post Office or Pak-N-Ship

Every Tuesday I would ship out orders from our web store. Sometimes I would have to make 2 trips!

This site used to have it's own mailing address! It was at the Pak-N-Ship down the street from me

Orders like this were taken to the Pak-N-Ship where they would box them up w/ packing peanuts

So all of this is floating around in my head, marinating in my mind while I'm simultaneously starting my new job at Toys "R" Us. I loved Toys "R" Us but hadn't spent much time there since Atari Lynx and TurboGrafx-16 left the store shelves. My high school years were a big void for Toys "R" Us, save the occasional video game purchase, or insanely huge Super Soaker cannon for high school or college hijinks. My first week at Toys "R" Us I was walking around the store trying to see the ghosts of the past, peering through time just a few years back to see the Atari items that were once on the shelf right in front of my face, and thinking of those that had come before me whose job it was to stock and sell 8-bit dreams. I finally stood on the other side of the cage and it was full of Game Boy Color, N64, Pokémon and PlayStation. Super Nintendo "Jr." systems were there along with a handful of SNES "Players Choice" Best Sellers. We had a pile of Sega Genesis 3 systems in the blue packaging. If I squint my eyes, on a good day I could see Atari Lynx, 7800, 2600, NES, Master System, TurboGrafx, Duo, and all the games on the cage shelves. The security cage was always messier than I had expected it would be. Every time I entered the cage I always crossed my fingers and held my breath in hopes of finding just one Lynx game or TurboGrafx TurboChip stashed away. A clearance item that had fallen behind a shelf, lost in a time capsule of messiness and a lack of interest by anybody but me.

The sudden popularity of Pokémon, which, don't forget, had essentially raised the aging Game Boy from the dead, had kickstarted the next generation of portable gaming. Majesco brought back the Sega Game Gear (it was $30!) after being absent from the shelves for several years and re-released about two dozen of the best Game Gear Games. It was my job to put these games in security clamshells and make room for them out on the floor. Game Gear wasn't Lynx, but it was in the ball park, and I chose some prime retail real estate out on the floor to stack these things nicely on the shelf. (If you go back and look at the picture of The Gooch, I placed the Game Gear setup right behind him where the radios were.) I even went so far as to print up some Toys "R" Us signage to place around "R"-Zone promoting the Game Gear's return. For under $50 you could buy a brand new in the box Sega Game Gear and get Columns and Lion King. This actually sold pretty well at the time thanks to my promotion, lots of parents with little pre-K aged children loved it.

The result of all this floating around my mind while launching the earliest incarnation of this website resulted in my "Atari Lifestyle" approach which still guides me today. I don't remember if the world was calling them "blogs" back then, most people called them a "Geocities page" or whatever was on Angelfire. But I got this idea in my head that the first article should feel like a National Geographic Explorer article. You know, the ones that would take you on archeological expeditions through the ruins of ancient Mayan civilizations, or on Safari, deep into the wilderness of Africa, capturing wildlife and evoking the feelings that come with it. That's what I wanted our site's blog to be (I still do) and my first idea was an "Atari Safari" through the wilderness of Toys "R" Us, hunting down whatever legacy could be found of what was left behind by Atari and the era it defined.

I started writing an article titled "The Toys "R" Us Affair: The Influence of Atari Today" and it became the first article on the site. (If you go back to the beginning of this thread and look at the first picture I posted, that was the graphic I had created for the blog entry, almost 20 years ago.) My co-workers in "R"-Zone had quickly become friends. Jared, Jeremy and Trevan were the first guys I worked with and were all avid gamers with an appreciation for classic video games, to one degree or another. I probably couldn't shut up about Atari and classic gaming back then. I would live, eat, breathe classic gaming and I saw my new job at TRU as an extension of this. I think I got them pretty excited too. When I got my first digital camera that same week, it hit me how fun it would be to take it with me on an "Atari Safari" through the store, with Jared, Jeremy and Trevan as "guides" on our expedition to uncover the remnants of Atari's legacy. I asked if they'd like to be part of the article and they were all excited to help out.

After all, a decade or so before, Atari was the fastest growing company in American history and was a tremendous part of Toys "R" Us sales. You'd think that if something made an impression that big on the toy industry, you'd still be able to see remnants of it somewhere. I wish I still had the article. Unfortunately I can't find it and it appears to be long gone. The gist of it is captured in the pictures I've been sharing with you in this thread though. Hasbro owned Atari that year and there were a lot of releases like "Centipede for PC" that year. We collected a lot of the Hasbro/Atari PC games and put them into a pile, you can see Jeremy standing by them in that first image I posted on page 1 of this thread.

N64 Paddle Controller

This is the "UltraRacer 64" driving controller from Performance

Performance was another TRU house brand, like High Frequency and Pavilion

Trevan & I were walking around looking for Atari stuff and I saw this controller.

"Wow. That's just a Paddle controller with more buttons!" I said.

It's more of a driving controller, but the similarities are obvious.

If you take that early Atari aesthetic and extrapolate it forward, this is the result

Trevan Showing Off Pac-Man & Galaga

Trevan is standing in our "PC Games & Strategy Guides" area showing off Pac-Man & Galaga

I've always said these early games are like board games for the TV screen

These games are like Checkers & Chess, they will always be around in some form

This picture was taken before the store was remodeled to the new floor plan

In the background is our co-worker Dong-Je putting back customer returns

Jenny, one of my best friends, worked at the front desk and was in love with him.

Dong was a jerk to her though, sadly. You'll get to see Jenny coming up.

Man, some things never change... Getting "Atari mail" always reminds me of the early days of having the web store. Packing and shipping Atari items and sending them off to their new homes. Stopped at the mail box today and received my first new "Atari mail" in some time. A nice package of Atari 2600 games from No Swear Gamer! Picked up Kangaroo, Pole Position, and Battlezone MIB, plus he was kind enough to throw in a bonus game for us to give away as a contest prize when Wednesday Night Atari Chat heats up again! THANKS NSG!

Remember the box cutters I said I brought home from "R"-Zone years ago? I did the honors of cutting open No Swear Gamer's package with one of them

As late summer gave way to fall, Toys "R" Us began hiring seasonal people to get ready for Christmas. I had come on as a regular employee and had just settled into my new job. I had gotten used to quiet Tuesday afternoons and high energy Saturdays in the video game department with Jared, Jeremy, Trevan and The Gooch. With the holidays looming, our staff literally tripled in one week. We had a lot of seriously shady people join the crew (more on that to come in another post...) and suddenly us established "R"-Zone guys felt kind of lost in the crowd, to an extent. In the shakeup we were joined by some new faces that we came to really like. These were two new seasonal guys helping out in "R"-Zone and other areas in the store: Jason, who was Jeremy's younger brother, joined us in "R"-Zone for the rest of the year. Along with Jason came his best friend Lance, who worked on a seasonal basis and ended up staying on full-time after the holidays had passed.

Jason and Lance were a year or two younger than I was, high schoolers filled with silly humor and an "A.V. Club" sensibility. I admit to being super skeptical of them at first, given the absolute shadiness of the new holiday hires who now made up 2/3 of our staff and had a penchant for popping pills and masturbating up in the gondolas behind the loading dock. Jason and Lance turned out to be pretty great guys.

Jason was kind of short, with a voice like Dale Gribble and an appearance like Pig-Pen. (I saw a customer insult Jason once by asking if he washed his hair with Crisco and corn chips. Mean, but that was surgically accurate.) Although Jason had a tendency to be distracted wandering around looking at Yu-Gi-Oh! cards, playing with Beyblades and not get any work done, he was a good person, friendly, and always interesting to work with. When January came I was sad to see the guy go.

Lance was lanky and tall, very intelligent, and always had a smile on his face. He and I got along extremely well. He knew a lot about video games and could appreciate different genres of gaming on their own terms. We had great conversations about classic video games, movies, pop culture, science, you name it. Lance would've made an excellent Atari I/O Member. He was around back when the site was brand new, I wish I could get ahold of him today and invite him into the Forums. Lance was a great hire for Toys "R" Us. His friendly, gentle giant disposition made him great with customers and especially little kids. He was knowledgable about games and toys and always happy to help.

When things were slow in "R"-Zone we were occasionally expected to help out in other worlds of the store. One Sunday in March, Lance and I were setting up pool toys and Easter stuff in the seasonal department. Out of the blue, Lance goes "Hey I checked out your website. You know, I always really wanted an Atari Lynx but I could never afford one and I could never find one. It had some really cool games. Have you ever played Blue Lightning? I always wanted that game as a kid." Well, I had Blue Lightning out in my car. I always kept a Lynx in the car with batteries, a cigarette lighter adapter, and a little stash of the best games. (I still do, there's one down in the car right now.)

Lance and I ended up talking about Lynx for the rest of the day. Lance had seen Lynx in the Sears Catalog and at Toys "R" Us as a kid and really wanted to get one. By the time he got anywhere close to affording one they were off the shelves. That day we went to lunch at the Wendy's in the parking lot of the shopping center where our Toys "R" Us was. We sat in there for our entire break dining on chicken nuggets and Frostees while I let Lance play as much Lynx as he could handle. Remember, even though the Atari Lynx was 10 years old at this point, it was still way ahead of most everything else and Game Boy Advance was still a year or so away.

Lance bought an Atari Lynx

Lance worked with us in "R"-Zone

He was also pretty obsessed with Blue Lightning

Notice the big "R"-Zone sign on the wall behind Lance

It's above the old cage door that survived the remodel

Also notice the security stanchion to the right

It has a good example of the TRU signs that we used to print

A few days would go by before I saw Lance again. When I did, he shot across the store, came up to me and started talking about Lynx again. I didn't say a word to him about the site having a web store. He was a friend and I didn't want to twist his arm. But he asked if he could buy one. "I don't really have much money but I really want to buy a Lynx from you, with the battery pack and a few games. Then I can buy more games later on." We ended up working out a "layaway"deal where he'd give me $30 from his paycheck every two weeks until he had caught up on his Lynx. I put together a really nice package for him: a brand new in the box Atari Lynx II with A/C adapter, Lynx Pouch, California Games, and batteries, plus Comlynx Cable, Sun Visor, Battery Pack, RoadBlasters, and of course Blue Lightning, and I gave him Power Factor for free. Everything was brand new and minty fresh.

Lance was absolutely thrilled with it. He too kept it in his car and brought it with him to the break room to play during lunch breaks. I can't tell you what a great feeling it was to quietly walk into the break room and see a few people standing around Lance watching him play Blue Lightning and pelting him with questions like "What is it, Game Boy?", or "Do we got that in the store?" and "That's an Atari?" It was fun having a friend to Comlynx up with and surf a few rounds on California Games. Lance ended up coming back for some more games later down the road. I remember him getting Dirty Larry: Renegade Cop and asking him "Are you sure?" haha.

Jeremy, our department head, eventually left "R"-Zone and Toys "R" Us altogether. He took a higher paying job as manager of the arcade in the mall across the street. This was a really nice mall, brand new and somewhat upscale. Even then, mall arcades were nearly extinct, but somehow we hadn't one and I really treasured the fact that we did. With Jeremy running the show there, it made for a great summer hangout during our off-hours. Jeremy hired his brother Jason to work with him at the arcade, and Lance and I would go hang out there for a little while during the day. Sometimes we were joined by Jared and The Gooch. But Lance was always there. Lance and I would play Skee-Ball for hours. I used to and give massages in the party room to a girl I liked. We all had a lot of fun times together. The arcade was located in the food court across from a Burger King. BK was running a promotion that summer where you buy a large "Wild, Wild West" cup with Will Smith on it and get unlimited refills. Jeremy let me keep the cup in the employee room in the arcade, I kept rinsing it out and going back to Burger King for Dr. Pepper refills all summer.